


There is no final curtain call

by samariumwriting



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Acting, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bisexual Characters, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Transphobia, Past Character Death, Past Child Abuse, Theatre, Trans Bernadetta von Varley, Trans Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26211973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: This year, Garreg Mach's annual production is the play adaptation of the ancient epic Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valentia. Felix, after years of performing, has finally landed one of the leading roles. There's one problem with this: Felix has never played a male role before.Bernadetta, meanwhile, has her own problems. As creative director, she knows it's vital that the cast don't hate her. And that's fine, mostly; everyone is friendly enough. Everyone except Felix.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Bernadetta von Varley
Comments: 26
Kudos: 29
Collections: 2020 Ultra Rarepair Big Bang





	1. Act One

**Author's Note:**

> This is my piece for the Ultra Rarepair Big Bang, hosted over on twitter @ultrararepairb1! I collabed with the amazing [@rattanwhip](https://twitter.com/rattanwhip), who produced a SUPER cute [piece of art](https://twitter.com/rattanwhip/status/1301938644647804931?s=20) for the fic.
> 
> A quick note: the play in this fic occasionally quotes Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia! This means that there are some fun out of context spoilers for the game, but you don't need to know anything about the game itself to understand.

_ Act One, Scene One _

The curtain rises on the opening scene: a brightly lit field, just beyond several school buildings. The school is not new, but not old - it holds a run-down look familiar to almost all of those who’ve ever had the chance to attend a medium size school in a relatively rural area. There is nothing special about it, nothing unusual.

A red-headed figure runs from the school entrance, a sheet of paper clutched in one hand. He runs across the field towards a shorter figure, a little hunched over; Felix, one of our protagonists.

“Felix!” the red head, Sylvain, calls. “You didn’t wait for the cast list!”

“No, I didn’t,” Felix replies. He adjusts the straps of his backpack nervously. He doesn’t want to know the results, and left with the express purpose of attempting to ignore the anticipation.

“Well, I did,” Sylvain announces proudly, a grin on his face. Felix can get the gist of where this is going. The piece of paper is waved around in front of him, too fast for Felix to read its words.

When Sylvain finally stops moving, Felix can make it out. He doesn’t need to go further than the third line; he’s been cast as Alm. The leading male role in The Shadows of Valentia. All at once, excitement and dread rise in his chest.

Felix smiles, but it feels forced. “Great!” he says, his voice sounding hollow. “I can’t wait to get into it.” Inside, he feels a little bit like he’s dying.

He’s almost disappointed in himself for feeling this way. He  _ knows _ he shouldn’t feel like this. Being cast in the leading role is meant to be a good thing. He’s good - really good, actually, and he expected to get a prominent role after his successful audition. It’s an acknowledgement of his acting talent, and yet...

It’s the leading role. The leading  _ male _ role.

Felix has not always played the male roles in plays. In last year’s production of The Awakening, he played Lucina, a character who spent half the play with a lowered voice and a man’s name. Felix would readily admit, in the coming months (after the embarrassment faded), that there was a thrill to being perceived as male that carried a greater weight than he expected.

Felix has never played a male role in a production before. This is his first year even auditioning for them. Never in a hundred years was he expecting to land a big one.

The margin of error for an actor in a play is small. For a lead actor, that margin is even smaller. For a lead actor whose role is in question, who people may try to tear down due to concerns over diversity casting or pity casting…

If Felix gets even a moment of his role wrong, everyone will attribute it to the parts of himself that are clear for everyone to see, the vulnerable spots everyone can look at and target. If that happens, Felix will be left to wonder if the scorn is  _ deserved. _

He has to get this right. If nothing else, this has to be the best play Garreg Mach has ever seen, and that means it  _ will _ be, because he has the power to make it happen.

And he is right, in a way - but perhaps not the way he’s thinking.

_ Act One, Scene Two _

Our second protagonist is not quite an actor on a stage, nor is she used to the spotlight. Instead, she is…

“Oh, Goddess, I can’t do  _ this!” _ Bernadetta says. She’s staring at the email from the head of drama at her school, which invites her to take up the creative direction of this year’s play. She’ll be in charge of costume design, lighting, sets and props; a whole host of things she doesn’t know if she can handle.

Bernadetta moves from her desk and flings herself on her bed with a frustrated sound. There’s absolutely no way she can do this. Her eye for detail probably isn’t as good as it should be, and when she  _ does _ manage to focus she loses sight of the bigger picture. All the actors will hate her, probably, and none of the creative team will be able to stand her presence.

The whole thing will be such a huge time commitment, and while that isn’t a problem because she doesn’t have many friends to do other things with, she shouldn’t be the person trusted to do all of this. She knows, deep in her heart, that she doesn’t deserve the role at all. She should turn it down to prevent disappointment.

A knock on the door. “Come in!” Bernadetta calls, and her uncle appears in the doorway. He waits a moment, and then steps inside, taking a seat at the desk chair she’s just vacated. “Tell me to turn it down,” she says.

He frowns. “What is it?” he asks. He can probably guess what it is, but Bernadetta recognises the real point of the question: encouraging her to talk the problem through  _ before _ jumping to what she knows is the inevitable conclusion.

“It’s the play,” she groans. “Ms Casagranda asked me to take up creative direction, and I can’t  _ do _ it!”

Her uncle smiles at her, his eyes alight. “It’s fantastic that you’ve even been picked,” he says, and Bernadetta furiously tries to bury the feeling of pride those words give her. It’ll only make the fall worse. “What’s the problem?”

“I don’t deserve it,” she says. “I’m not good enough to do the job, or do it right.”

“Nonsense,” he says firmly. “Bernie, you work so hard. You’ve been doing backstage work on those plays for years. Is there anyone in the whole crew with more experience than you?”

“Linhardt,” she says.

“Would Linhardt do a better job than you?”

“Probably.” This isn’t true, and both of them know it - as much as Linhardt is a fantastic tech assistant, he doesn’t care about enough of the different aspects of theatre to do creative direction. “But even if he  _ wouldn’t,  _ I still can’t do this.”

“I think you can,” he says, and even though she knows that he says this about literally everything he wants to encourage her to do, she’s starting to believe his words. “You just need to cover your bases on the things you’re not so confident about. What can you do, to do that?”

“Everything,” she says, and he fixes her with a look. Fair. “I’m mostly worried that the actors will hate me and I’ll just be an intrusion to their play.”

“Well, it’s as much your play as it is theirs,” he says. “Do you know any of them?”

“Probably,” she says. “There are lots of people there who’ve been involved before. But I haven’t really- talked to them much, so it’ll just be weird.”

“That’s fine,” he reasons. “You can build yourself up with them, and then it’ll be less weird.”

“I guess I could…” Bernadetta hums. “I could attend the early rehearsals. Then I can get a good idea of what I want to go for further down the line.”

“Perfect,” her uncle says, standing from his seat. “So have I convinced you to accept?”

Bernadetta grimaces, and then nods. “Yeah,” she says. “Thanks, uncle.” He smiles at her and leaves her to her thoughts, which are now much more directed towards how to approach the play.

The Shadows of Valentia is a stage adaptation of one of the tales in the Fire Emblem epics. It takes a dual perspective, alternating almost scene by scene between two heroes chosen by fate to lead their respective lands to be reunited. It combines threads of secret identities, religious cults, a war to reclaim a country from a tyrant, and, of course, the Fire Emblem standard: dragon gods driven mad by the relentless passage of time.

It’s a classic story and it is, by some accounts, a little staid, a little straight. Bernadetta is inclined to agree with the last point - mostly. Yes, a tale of two concurrent journeys taken by Prince and Princess to reach a final, married conclusion with a happily ever after is, as things go, pretty straight.

But that’s not the point. The point is the drama, the connections, and the fabulous supporting cast. Bernadetta is determined to make something bright and wonderful out of this unpolished gem. She just has to put the work in first.

_Act One, Scene Three_

“I know what it is. And if Grandfather won’t do it, then I’ll do it for him. Consider my sword as his,” Felix says, trying to push as much genuine emotion into his tone as he can. It’s only the second week of rehearsals, and they’re still mostly reading through and getting a sense for interactions, but he wants to get it right as soon as he can.

“Alm, I understand how you feel, but—” Ferdinand replies, stumbling just a little over one of the phrases. Felix pushes back against his twinge of annoyance; it’s early days, and there’s no reason to expect anyone to do it completely fluently just yet.

“I know as much about war as any man who has never seen one can. Let me fight for you with my grandfather’s gifts. I’ll prove he’s no cowardly old man,” he continues. The delivery is one he’s practised a few times in front of the mirror, and now it falls from his lips easily. He looks up from his script, and his gaze catches sight of that girl again.

She doesn’t rehearse. From the practises they’ve already done, he knows she’s not a cast member - he’s seen every actor perform at least a handful of lines, and she isn’t one of them, despite attending every single rehearsal. She doesn’t say a word, she just...watches.

Felix watches her in return. She’s nervous - her hands constantly worry the ends of hoodie strings, and she alternates between bouncing her left or right leg against the ground. He’d assume she doesn’t want to be there, but there’s clearly a choice of sorts involved. There’s nothing keeping her in the room, after all.

Maybe Felix also finds his eyes drawn to her because she’s pretty. She has an open, expressive face, and the hair that frames it is fluffy and she’s just- she’s really cute, and it makes it hard to pay attention to the play all the time.

This isn’t Felix’s fault; the play is a jumbled mess of themes he can only half bring himself to care about. It has an entire plot thread surrounding the nobility of knighthood, and their actor for Clive is so good at his role already that Felix  _ almost _ wants to tell him he sounds like a dick every time he opens his mouth.

He just can’t stand the idea of knighthood as something to aspire to. Felix has been to one too many military funerals in his life to be able to stomach that. The source material is old, but the words are familiar, so it’s  _ not _ his fault that he’d rather let his eyes roam around the room.

It’s not all bad - if it was, he wouldn’t be so willing to attend almost every rehearsal. There are plenty of things he can tolerate, or even enjoy: Felix can say plenty of pointed things about Alm, but he  _ is _ a caring protagonist. And there’s nothing wrong with plenty of the other main themes of the play; sticking a finger up at traditions decreed by an old power isn’t something he turns his nose up at.

On the whole, he doesn’t really care about what the play depicts or what it means. But the few elements he can connect to at least help a little with getting into the role. Especially with how important it is that he understands the character and acts him out properly.

He needs to get it right. With every practise, something goes just the tiniest bit wrong. Occasionally, someone shoots him a look which could mean that they don’t think he deserves the role. And he  _ knows _ that jealousy is a normal reaction that a lot of people have when it comes to acting - he’s felt it himself - but he can’t help but feel there’s something more.

There’s only one way to make it so he doesn’t feel that pressure: practise. Practising as much as he can in a reasonable space of time.

Felix is, however, not known for his self restraint. His commitment to being ‘great’ is less dedication and more obsession. He knows, from experience, what the consequences of this could be.

Whether he will act on that knowledge...well, everyone around him already knows that he hasn’t learned from those lessons. What comes next surprises no one, least of all him.

_Act One, Scene Four_

The lead for the play, who Bernadetta gathers is called Felix more from other people talking to him than him bothering to introduce himself to anyone else, takes his role very seriously. She sees him rehearsing every day, long past any of the full cast commitments.

Bernadetta  _ used _ to be the only one who used the studio every day after school, but now she shares her favourite workspace with a boy who she can only describe as an antisocial gremlin.

He’s there, filling the room with his grumpy vibes, every time she enters the studio. “Leave me alone,” he says the first time, so Bernadetta leaves him to it, fleeing the drama studio and hoping that he won’t remember her enough to hate her for the rest of his life.

The second time, he glares at her. Bernadetta leaves before he can even open his mouth.

“You know you’re in my way, right?” he asks the third time. On this occasion, Bernadetta doesn’t leave immediately. Instead, she shakes her head.

“I’m not really,” she says firmly. “Just pretend I’m not here!”

“But you  _ are _ here,” he replies, his forehead creasing under the force of his scowl. “I can’t just ignore you.”

“What do you do when you have an audience normally?” she asks.

“...I ignore them,” he admits. Bernadetta offers him a small, triumphant smile, but he doesn’t return it. “Shut up.” She didn’t say anything, but okay. “And go away. I need to be on my own for this to work.”

Bernadetta leaves, but she can feel a fragment of confidence starting to grow in her chest. She’ll get through to him eventually, she knows it, and then she’ll be able to get everything done that she needs to. He’s the only cast member so far who’s refused to hold a complete conversation with her.

It’s the fourth time when she realises something: Felix is nervous.

Felix performs loudly and with the full extent of his energy every time he rehearses. Bernadetta knows, from everything she’s seen him practise, that he’s essentially going through the whole play section by section to perfect everything, right down to the last gesture.

As such, she’s not surprised when she walks into the room and Felix is halfway through a monologue, slightly hunched in on himself but still projecting right to the back of the room. “It taught me that when we stand up and fight…we help those people,” he says, his voice cracking slightly with emotion. “I don’t want to stop helping them now. I want to press on and- oh, fuck it, that’s not right.”

Bernadetta nearly opens her mouth to tell him he’s doing well, but he continues. “Stupid, stupid!” He paces to one side of the stage and slams his fist against a windowsill. “Shouldn’t even be doing this. You won’t get it right, why are you even  _ trying.” _

Bernadetta knows that if she was smart, she’d back away, leave the room, and let him work through it himself. Bernadetta would maintain that she is not smart.

“I think it sounds pretty good,” Bernadetta says, her voice small. Honestly, it sounded fine. He’s probably just been going at it so long that his voice doesn’t sound real to himself anymore.

He jumps and his eyes snap towards her. “Oh,” he says. A slight flush appears on his face, along with a deepened scowl. “I didn’t even realise you were here. Go away.”

“I think you just need to take a break for a bit and go back to it with fresh ears!” she calls, backing out of the door. Maybe Felix isn’t quite as intimidating as he tries to appear.


	2. Act Two

_Act Two, Scene One_

For a romance to develop in three acts, the second act must feature a closing of the gap between our dual protagonists. Fortunately for such a tale, Bernadetta is of the same perspective - to win a conversation with the leading man, she knows she needs to engage with him on his own terms.

“I’ll give you some pointers!” Bernadetta suggests the next time Felix asks her to leave the studio and let him practise in peace. “You’ll improve more if you let me help. I’m not an actress, but I’ve seen a lot of plays.”

Felix scowls, and for a moment she thinks he’ll turn her down again, but eventually he nods. “Do you have a script to hand?” he asks. Bernadetta nods, pulling it out of her bag. “Okay. I’ll go from the top of the bit I’m rehearsing.”

“Where’s that?” she asks.

“It’s Alm and Rudolf,” he explains. “It’s at...the end of Act Four?” She nods and flips to the right page, watching as he moves back towards the centre left of the stage and begins. “Then I’ve just…oh, gods…what have I-”

“You need to-” Berndetta cuts herself off as Felix turns more directly towards her. “Um. You need to deliver it with more sadness. His father just died!”

“He doesn’t _know_ him,” Felix objects.

“Well, he’s sad anyway,” Bernadetta replies. “Think of it as...he was unsure about his identity, right? People keep challenging his right to be where he is. This is a vindication of sorts, a chance at connecting with the other forces at play, and he’s just killed him. So act it like that.”

“It’s not my fault the play is crap,” Felix grumbles. “It doesn’t make sense for him to be sad.”

“Sure,” Bernadetta says, and this time she feels a little more confident as his eyes meet hers. “But even if this part of the plot is awful and anyone could write something better in their sleep, you still have to sell it to the audience. Make it so emotional that they forget how dumb it is that the commoner standing up to fight has been a prince all along.”

Her strong feelings about how much the narrative sucks seem to resonate with Felix, who nods and refreshes himself on the lines again. “Then I’ve just…oh, gods…what have I done?”

When he finishes his monologue, Bernadetta smiles. “Better!” she says, and when Felix looks at her properly there’s a hint of a smile on his face. “I think you can leave the rest for now, this is a really late scene. Do you want to try something else?”

“Meeting Clair,” Felix says. “Back in Act One.”

“Sure thing,” she says, flipping to the page in question. The section...isn’t a monologue. She pulls a face. “Do you...want me to act this?” She can’t act. She _knows_ she can’t act.

“You don’t want to?” Felix challenges, and Bernadetta sighs, standing from her seat and going to stand opposite him.

“I can try,” she says. She will fail and look stupid, but she can try. She looks down at the page and starts to read. “Ah! Salutations, Alm.”

“H-hello, Clair...” Felix’s response has so much more depth than hers, and his laugh resonates around the whole room in comparison to her meek projection, but he _is_ the actor. Bernadetta tries not to let it get to her.

“And just what are you guffawing at? Such behavior is unspeakably boorish!” This isn’t working, and Bernadetta knows it, but she has to keep going. This is her chance to get Felix to listen to her.

“Sorry! Sorry. Very sorry. It’s just…who says salutations on a battlefield?”

“Wh— Bu—” Bernadetta cuts herself off with a frustrated sound. “I can’t do this,” she says. “Sorry, I’m not worth your time to practise with.”

“You’re fine,” Felix says, but she knows he’s just lying.

“No!” she replies. “I’m terrible. I am _so_ bad at acting, I should definitely just leave you alone before you hate me, oh Goddess you probably already hate me, don’t you? I’m so sorry, I-”

“Let’s talk about something else,” Felix says, interrupting her thoughts. She attempts to bring them back under control, but it’s hard. Her mind goes blank, and she can’t think of anything else to say. “How about all the things that you’ll be doing for this play. You’re the creative director, right?”

And there it is! Her chance to finally get a proper conversation about this going with him. “We can talk about that,” she says, feeling a little of the nervousness begin to lift already. “We need to talk about costumes at some point.”

“Costumes?” Felix asks. “I don’t know anything about clothes.”

Of course he doesn’t. He’s the actor, he doesn’t _need_ to know about clothes, why would he waste his time thinking about clothes? She wants to apologise again, but instead Bernadetta forces different words out. “Any suggestions you have are super helpful,” she says. “Anything at all.”

“Something loose,” Felix says, and as he speaks his hand goes to the front of his shirt, pulling it outwards at the centre. Something clicks into place; Bernadetta _had_ thought his voice was quite high for someone his age.

“How about a tunic?” she asks. She can see it already - blue, or maybe green. The original actors of the play way back in the day would have worn mockup— or real —armour, but they didn’t have the budget or ability for that kind of costuming. “Maybe it should have an emblem on it or something, to make sure it doesn’t look too plain.”

“Like the Fire Emblem?” Felix asks, chuckling at his own joke.

Bernadetta can’t help but let out a groan. “Yeah, sure,” she says. “Like the Fire Emblem.”

There’s a beat where Felix looks momentarily uncomfortable, and Bernadetta’s mind flies a million places to things she could have done wrong before he speaks. “Something loose won’t...ruin your creative vision or anything, right?” he asks.

“Not at all!” she says firmly. “Anything to make people comfortable.” Felix shifts on the spot, but he looks almost pleased. Maybe...relieved. She can understand that. “Besides, it’s not like anyone can act in super restrictive clothing.”

Felix nods. “I’m glad,” he says. He looks down at his script, and for a moment Bernadetta worries he’s going to ask her to act again when he cracks a smile. “You know, you may be crap at acting, but you’re pretty good at the thing you _are_ doing in this play.”

Bernadetta could die, right then and there. Crap at acting - just as she knew she was. Goddess, Felix probably thinks she’s a fool for even trying. But at the same time… “Thanks,” she manages, her voice coming out in barely more than a squeak. Felix _did_ just compliment her, and she’ll take what she can get.

_Act Two, Scene Two_

Felix falls to the floor of the stage, his hands stretching upwards as he attempts to escape invisible arms dragging him down. Bernadetta doesn’t read any lines from the other characters, instead pacing back and forth along the length of the stage to make sure his form is clear to anyone in the audience.

When Felix wraps up his lines and relaxes his posture, the sun sets, casting dramatic shadows on the studio floor. He practically falls to the ground, breathing heavily. “Looking good!” she confirms.

“Finally Alm can go save Tatiana for her boyfriend or whatever,” Felix says, staying put for now. In his defence, that concluded their sixth consecutive runthrough of the scene. “You really know how to put someone through their paces.”

“It’s a really visually striking scene,” Bernadetta explains. “If there’s anything I can help you get right, it’s this.”

“It was helpful,” Felix admits, turning over to sit cross legged on the floor. Bernadetta pauses, and then goes to join him, sitting on a chair right at the front.

“I’m just glad to be able to help,” she says.

Felix pauses before he speaks again. “You know you don’t _have_ to help,” he says. “It’s very useful, and I’m grateful for it, but- it takes a lot of time, and you spend more time doing any directing than Ms Casagranda.”

“I’d be here anyway,” she says with a shrug, half hoping that Felix will let it drop and half hoping he’ll dig further.

“Why _do_ you spend so much time here?” he asks. “Not that you can’t be here, but you’re not an actor.”

Bernadetta pauses. “I…” She may as well tell the truth, she supposes. “I don’t really want to go home. It’s not bad there, but- I feel like I’m such a bother to my uncle.” Almost immediately, she regrets saying anything, sure that Felix won’t care, but the words are out there now.

“I’m sure you’re not,” he says.

For a moment, Bernadetta wavers between keeping her mouth shut or spilling the full story. But she’s never been good at the former, and Felix is actually a way better listener than she would ever expect. “I didn’t used to live with him,” she says, “but it’s sort of…sorry, you don’t want to hear this.”

“I’ll listen anyway,” Felix says.

“I used to spend a lot of time here and in the art studios,” she explains. “Doing various projects, making every excuse I could to stay. Until one of the teachers asked me why I didn’t want to go home to my parents, and- well, they weren’t good people.”

Felix nods. He doesn’t press, but Bernadetta is pretty sure he doesn’t need to. She’s said enough for people to fill in the gaps - only people who are really, morbidly curious tend to dig any more. “So theatre is basically a second home to me,” she finishes. “I don’t want to overstay my welcome at the first one, so...here I am!"

After finishing, she feels stupid. She’s barely known Felix for more than a handful of weeks, and she just dumped a whole load of shit on him that he probably didn’t want to hear. She opens her mouth to apologise, hoping it isn’t too late, but Felix shakes his head.

“I understand,” he says. “It makes a lot of sense to want to be here. I...appreciate the company as well as the help.”

Bernadetta feels herself flush pink. A _real_ compliment from Felix is pretty rare, but they’re becoming all the more frequent now. It’s nice. “I’m glad,” she says, glancing up at the clock on the wall. It’s getting late; later than she thought, even.

She stands, and Felix hesitates before following her. “I’ll get the curtains,” he says, as she moves over to the door.

“Sure,” she says, watching him pull them closed. “Hey, Felix, why do _you_ spend so much time here?”

Felix is not the most expressive person when he’s not acting, and Bernadetta isn’t fantastic at recognising emotions when they’re not spelled out in a script. But she can recognise the way his posture closes off from a mile away. “I’d rather not say,” he says.

Anxiety jumps in Bernadetta’s throat, but before she can let it run away with her, she reminds herself that it’s no big deal. Just something Felix doesn’t want to say; it wasn’t rude to ask, and it isn’t rude of him to refuse to answer. “Sure,” she says, and the ease returns to his posture a little.

They walk out into the sunset together a little closer than before.

_Act Two, Scene Three_

Staying late in the studio together becomes routine, and Bernadetta gets used to taking Felix through scenes, giving pointers where she can, and giving him a much needed reality check when he’s too hard on himself. In return, Felix _always_ seems glad for her help, and even his half compliments light up her day.

That day, it’s getting dark as they wrap up their rehearsal. As they run through the usual steps to make sure everything’s left in a state where it can be used tomorrow, Felix seems restless. When they’re done, he finally speaks. “We take most of the same route back,” he says. “We could walk together?”

It takes just a moment for Bernadetta to realise what he’s asking: he wants to walk her home. She hesitates for a moment; in the past, she’s always found something else to do when he leaves, be that grabbing an instrument or fetching a piece of art. But seeing as he asked, she supposes it can’t hurt. “Sure,” she says. It’s not like he’s bad company.

Their walk back is quiet, initially - Bernadetta isn’t quite sure what to say, or if she should say anything at all. But she doesn’t dig out her headphones or anything like that; Felix must have _something_ he wants to do, given that he asked her to do this.

“I nearly got kicked out of school entirely, a couple years back,” he says, out of nowhere.

“What?” Bernadetta asks. It’s not just Felix saying it that surprises her - she _knows_ he works hard on his schoolwork, he’s mentioned that he goes home and studies pretty much every day. He has stamina that’s almost unthinkable to Bernadetta, so it doesn’t make sense at all that anyone would suggest kicking him out.

“You- you asked. A couple days ago,” Felix clarifies. “Why I spend so much time rehearsing?”

“Oh, r-right!” she says. “I did.” 

“It was nothing to do with schoolwork,” he continues. “It was more...the way I treated other people, I guess.”

“Huh,” she says. “I mean, I know you’re sort of- prickly, I guess.” Felix raises an eyebrow. “But there are people who are way ruder, and-”

“My brother died a few years ago,” Felix explains. “It wasn’t a shock accident or anything. It was a targeted attack; he was a bodyguard for an important political figure. You’ve...I mean, you probably know this already. It’s not a secret.”

Now, Bernadetta realises why the name Fraldarius was so familiar when she first saw Felix’s name on the cast list. It wasn’t because she already knew him, but because of all the attention around the name a few years ago. There’d been a memorial service in the school, news outlets flocking to the town, all because of the murder of a young man fresh out of school. A young man who was Felix’s brother, once.

“I felt like no one understood me, after all that happened,” Felix continues. “I lashed out at- everyone, really. Just be glad you didn’t know me back then.” He laughs, and it’s not exactly _light,_ but it’s not without humour either. “It was mostly because I didn’t understand _myself,_ but it was so hard to express anything. All I could do was be angry.”

Bernadetta nods. She knows the feeling. When everything jumbles up so much that the only thing left is frustration, rage, and there’s only one way to show everyone that something is so horribly _wrong._

“Eventually, they gave me an ultimatum. I had to stop picking fights and sort myself out, or they’d suspend me for as long as it took.” He sighs. “I didn’t really get how serious something like that would be at the time, but my teachers did. One of them suggested acting as a way to escape the present, to dissect the way I felt.”

“And since then…”

Felix gestures at the air, his breathing slightly heavy. “It helped,” he says. “It helped a lot. I’m not always the best at, well, anything like that, but I’m better at it. Getting there, even.”

“Thank you,” she says, and Felix looks at her strangely. “For telling me. You didn’t have to.”

“I think I sort of owed you,” he says with a laugh. “I was too rude about it before. Besides, I don’t think anyone ever asked me what acting really meant to me before. I wanted to say it anyway.”

The rest of the walk back is easy. Felix and Bernadetta walk side by side, happy to just spend time in each others’ company. Something feels lighter, somehow; the weight of the past no longer forming a barrier between them.

_Act Two, Scene Four_

When Bernadetta enters the studio that day, the full-cast rehearsal is just about ending. Felix is up on the stage, opposite Hilda; they must be working on a scene from early in the play.

“Well! Remember when you sat next to me at dinner yesterday? You gave me that leftover heel of bread you didn’t want!” Hilda says, leaning closer to him. Here, Bernadetta knows that Felix is meant to look a little uncomfortable, but not move away.

Felix leans away. “You’re excited about…bread?” he replies, and Bernadetta frowns. His voice sounds strange, subdued. It’s completely different to the version of the scene she practised with him only a couple of days before.

“Again,” Ms Casagranda says, and they start from the top of the scene. This time, they don’t even get to the point they stopped at just before when she shakes her head. There’s the smallest note of frustration, edged with despair, when she opens her mouth again. “We’re at time for the rehearsal. Let’s wrap up now and work on it another time.”

The rest of the cast seem to breathe a collective sigh of relief as they quickly break character and filter towards the door. Bernadetta steps away, into the main body of the room, to let them all pass. Within seconds, it’s only her, Ms Casagranda, and Felix who remain.

Felix’s whole body is tensed up as their teacher approaches. “I’ll try harder,” he says, his voice tight.

Ms Casagranda nods. “I understand you find this role challenging,” she says, “but it was given to you because I believe in your ability to get this right. I know you won’t disappoint, so just keep going and I’m sure you’ll get there.”

Felix nods, but as he watches her leave, his face remains creased in a frown. Bernadetta feels something uncomfortable settle in her chest, unsure of what to say. The silence stretches on for a few awkward seconds until he reopens his script without another word.

“You’re excited about bread,” he says. “Bread. Bread.” He repeats it once, twice, until his voice cracks and the tone goes flat and lifeless. “You’re excited about bread.”

Normally, Bernadetta would say something. She’d shoot him a nervous smile, pick up her script, and give a few pointers. Tell him to lift his tone, lighten the lower notes to make them clearer, and take a sip of water. Honestly, at this point she’d tell him to give this scene a rest for a while and do something else - maybe even tell him to call it quits entirely, at least for the rest of the day.

But as Felix lets out a noise of frustration and flops onto the floor, Bernadetta knows he doesn’t want crit right now. In fact, it’s probably the last thing he needs. So she takes the last few steps up towards the stage and jumps to sit on the edge, a short distance from where Felix lies.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. She can see roughly what’s wrong, of course, but Felix is _good._ Even on his bad days, he’s better than speaking in a way that surely wrecks his voice.

Felix lets out a groan and doesn’t move. Okay, that’s a mood. He probably just needs a minute. “Fair,” she says.

Eventually, Felix rolls over to face her, his face screwed up in a mix of anger, frustration, and bone-deep disappointment that Bernadetta recognises from the many times she’s seen it in the mirror. None of these feelings are directed at her. “I was told to make my line delivery more manly,” he says.

“Why?” Bernadetta asks. She knew, of course. There was only one possible reason, but she didn’t think that anyone - let alone Ms Casagranda - would stoop to something like that.

“Alm’s meant to be a great hero,” he says with a shrug. “He’s meant to be...a strapping young man, or something like that.” He raises one hand in the air and lets it flop to the ground. “I can’t do that. I’m just-” He sighs again.

“Well _I_ think that’s okay,” Bernadetta says. “Especially at this point in the play, so I don’t understand why anyone brought it up here. Alm is meant to be young, naive, and way in over his head in this conflict that’s so much bigger than him. He’s not exactly Valbar, or even Lukas.”

Felix groans. “I know,” he says. “I _know,_ and that’s why this is so stupid. Because these are the opening scenes, and I have to show the audience I’m-” He clenches his fists tight. “I have to show them I’m a man. I don’t want to be trans Alm, or girl Alm. I want to play _Alm._ As he is, on the page of the stupid, cliched script.”

“What’s wrong with being trans Alm?” she asks tentatively. Sure, she can understand that it’s not the only thing he wants to be remembered for, but...there’s nothing wrong with it. If anything, Alm reads as a character who spends the plot of the game coming into, understanding, and proving himself to those who doubt him.

Felix grumbles, stumbling over a few half formed phrases before he properly answers. “I act as a character,” he says. “I’m not myself _plus_ the character, that’s not the point.”

“I understand,” she says, though she isn’t sure she does. There must be something else going on here, something that made it hard for Felix to produce an answer. Either way, she knows Felix won’t appreciate it if she prods more, and she has no desire to piss him off. “I still think you should do it as you want to.”

Felix sighs. “I know,” he says. “I don’t think I have a choice, anyway.” His voice is bitter, and he lets the words hang between them for a while as he lies there. “Ugh,” he says, finally standing again. Bernadetta stands with him, knowing what the next words will be before they even leave his mouth. “I’m going to call it a day. I’m not going to get any real practise done like this.”

“You’ll be fine,” she says. She hopes. “You’ll be more with it another time.” She offers him a weak smile, and he returns it as he leaves the room. Bernadetta sits back down on the stage, staring at the dust left floating in his wake, illuminated in the afternoon sunlight.

Felix, even after the steps she’s made, is a tough nut to break. There’s something else he carries with him alongside all that restlessness, that desire to achieve, and she has no idea how to help him overcome that thing she knows, undeniably, is shame.

_Act Two, Scene Five_

“But how can you be—” Felix says, leaning forwards a little as he spoke.

“Enough! Just…enough. Go fight your war if it makes you happy. I’m going to the Temple of Mila. Good-bye, Alm,” Bernadetta continues. Somehow, she’s getting a little better at this, and she doesn’t feel so much like she’s wasting Felix’s time. “You…you stubborn jerk!”

“Celica…you’re one to talk about stubbornness, geez… Ah, damn it all.” When Felix finishes speaking, he huffs, storming off towards the edge of the stage. The line of his shoulders relaxes, and Bernadetta lets her own feeble act drop. “Think that’s believable enough?”

“Anything wrong with it is something wrong with the script,” Bernadetta confirms. “This argument is so _contrived.”_

“They just...don’t understand each other,” Felix says. “And they’re both full of way too many emotions. But as long as I can get that across, I think we’re fine.”

Bernadetta nods. “I think you’ve got it!” she says. “Are we done for today?”

“Yeah,” Felix answers. “That’s pretty much the end of that segment of the play anyway, there’s no use going into something else just now.”

“Great,” she says. “Will you...be able to do the next bit on your own tomorrow?” she asks. Really, she probably should have said something sooner, but there was never a good time to slip it into conversation. “I won’t be here.”

“Are you busy?” Felix asks. There’s a hint of _something_ to his voice that confirms Bernadetta’s suspicions; Felix doesn’t like it when his plans change in a way that’s too last minute.

For a moment, Bernadetta considers telling him that it’s none of his business what she’s doing, and he doesn’t need to know just because it interferes with his plans. But she knows that he’s only asking because she’s _always_ here. “I have an appointment to pick up my next lot of estrogen,” she says.

Felix blinks, a look of surprise on his face. It morphs into confusion, then understanding, and then back to surprise. “Wait, you’re-” He pauses. “You’re trans?”

“What?” Bernadetta asks. Didn’t he...know already? “Felix, we had all those conversations about _you_ being trans and you thought I was-”

Felix rubs the back of his head, half a smile forming on his face. “Yeah,” he admits. “I did.” Oops.

“Oh Goddess,” Bernadetta says. “Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry! All that time, you thought I was just- just trying to be someone well-meaning who didn’t actually _get_ it, and I asked you all those things that were probably kind of intrusive sounding, and- Goddess, I’m so sorry.”

“No, no,” Felix says. “Calm down.” That’s a little easier said than done. All this time, he thought she was someone she wasn’t, and now there was a note to his voice that she really didn’t recognise and it was almost definitely a bad thing.

“I’m really sorry,” she repeats. “I should have said something instead of assuming, I just-”

“Stop, Bernadetta,” Felix says firmly. “Let me have a moment.”

Ohh, now she’s done it. He’s collecting his thoughts to tell her that she’s been a bad friend, that she should have been clearer with him, that they could have had a conversation on another level if she’d just remembered that not everyone knew everything about her right from the moment she met them.

But he doesn’t say anything, and after a minute she looks up, and he’s- smiling. “What- what are you smiling at?” she asks.

“You,” Felix says, and he’s still looking at her in that same strange way as before. ‘You.’ What’s that even supposed to mean? “I’ve...never met a trans person before. At least- not someone else.”

“Ohhhh,” she manages, letting out a long breath. That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. And that makes the look still fixed on his face...awe, almost. That feeling of unexpected familiarity.

Felix smiles even wider this time. “I thought I was the only one at this whole _school_ ,” he says, which is slightly ridiculous because Bernadetta can at least think of someone in the tech crew who’s just the same.

“Guess you’re not as alone as you thought,” Bernadetta says, returning his smile.

Felix sits down heavily on the side of the stage, and Bernadetta joins him. His hands are shaking a little, but she gets it. This feeling is...a lot, the first time round.

They sit in silence for a while, Bernadetta happy to let him just take in the moment. “Thank you,” Felix says, and she looks up, knowing confusion is evident on her face.

“For what?” she asks tentatively. Even now, she’s sure she’s done _something_ wrong. Felix can’t be glad that she kept this to herself for so long when he could have had this moment earlier.

“Existing,” Felix says simply, and Bernadetta feels something swell in her heart.

And so the second act closes with similarity, familiarity. A whole realm of understanding opening up and waiting for the future to rush in.


	3. Act Three

_Act Three, Scene One_

There is only one logical conclusion to a romance, and the final act exists to tell it.

Felix and Bernadetta walk home together that afternoon; they often do, these days, with Bernadetta no longer feeling like her very presence is a nuisance to him. They live a mere fifteen minutes apart, and Felix has always walked down Bernadetta’s street to get home. That day is no different.

Until it is, and when Felix reaches Bernadetta’s house, he pauses. When Bernadetta halts too, not making her way up the garden path and into the house beyond, he hops up onto the wall.

“Sorry,” Felix says, and he doesn’t apologise often, so Bernadetta looks at him strangely. “You were in the middle of saying something. I didn’t want to interrupt by just leaving.”

“R-right,” Bernadetta says, smiling as she desperately tries to remember where she left off. “Oh! I just think Zeke and Tatiana are sweet. I know they’re not major roles, but there’s something about their story, and the way the actors capture it…”

“They’re a couple,” Felix explains. “They have been for a couple of years, actually. They’re the slightest bit insufferable about it, in their sappy, lovey-dovey way, but it makes for good romantic theatre.”

“Oh!” Bernadetta says. With how focused he is during rehearsals, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Felix knows the people he acts with. He knows them better than she does, for sure. “That makes a lot of sense, actually.” It certainly put the ease with which they held hands on stage into perspective.

“I stand by what I said, though,” Felix says, reminding Bernadetta exactly why she’d had to bring up Zeke and Tatiana in the first place. “The play is _painfully_ heterosexual. It’s nauseating.”

“Yeah,” Bernadetta admits. It really is. “But I think the cast do a pretty good job of making it less straight.” Felix looks at her questioningly. “I-I mean-” She blushes, knowing exactly where this is going. “There are lots of cute girls. In the cast. Y-yeah.”

Felix lets out a gentle laugh, and the small smile on his face makes Bernadetta’s stomach flip. It’s not just cute girls in the cast. “I thought you were meant to have your eyes on the creative details,” he says, and there’s a _teasing_ note to his tone and Goddess, Felix is evil.

“I do!” she objects. “How pretty they are is a creative detail. A very important one. There’s this principle in costume design, it’s called the Homura method, and it-”

“Bernadetta,” Felix says, and for a moment she thinks he’s going to call his bluff. Instead, he says something so much better and so much worse all at the same time. “Are you...you know. Gay?”

Bernadetta laughs nervously. “It’s theatre,” she says, “shouldn’t you be asking if I’m straight?”

As soon as the words fall from her lips, she feels like she’s made a mistake. Oh Goddess, oh heck, the assumption implicit in her words there is so clear and she knows already that she’s stepped all over way too many of Felix’s boundaries, and maybe he _is_ straight and she just insulted him sort of.

“Are you?” Felix asks, and though his tone sounds unbothered his face is bright pink. Bernadetta tries to justify it as a product of the sun, but she knows it’s not true.

“No,” she says, “but I’m not gay either.” Something in the air must give her courage, because she looks directly at him, biting down hard on her lip before she opens her mouth. “Men can be okay too.”

“O-oh yes,” Felix says, suddenly finding the grass at his feet very interesting. Bernadetta knows what that grass looks like; it is _not_ interesting. “Men are good. They can be, um. Cute.” Then, after what feels like an age of the most awkward silence Bernadetta has ever experienced, he looks up. Catches her eyes again. “Girls can be cute too though.”

Bernadetta nearly dies. She _does_ die, at least inside, when Felix’s hand brushes hers on the wall. It’s just for a moment - barely a second, even, but it’s everything. Felix blinks, breaks eye contact, and the moment passes, leaving both of them feeling far, far too warm.

If Felix’s face was pink before, it’s bright red when he stands from the wall and very nearly sprints down the street. “See you tomorrow!” he calls, and Bernadetta buries her face in her hands as soon as he’s out of sight.

She has a crush on Felix. She is _so_ screwed.

_Act Three, Scene Two_

“Okay, I have a problem,” Felix says to the assembled trio of friends in front of him. Sylvain looks up from his phone and raises an eyebrow. “I need your help.”

“You said,” Ingrid says, “but what actually _is_ the problem? If it’s serious, maybe you should go to Rodrigue, there’s not much-”

“Nope,” Felix says. “I can’t. This is…” He fiddles with the hem of his shirt and continues. “I have a crush. On a girl.”

Sylvain drops his phone into his soup and makes a noise of strangled despair. “You have a crush? On a _girl?”_

“Sylvain, don’t mock him!” Ingrid says, attempting to fish Sylvain’s phone out of the soup. “He’s trying his best.”

Felix is about to interject and ask what she means by ‘trying his best’, but Dimitri steps in. “What’s she like?” he asks.

Okay. He can describe her, that’s easy. Maybe. “She’s sort of shy,” he says. “But so enthusiastic, and really determined when she sets her mind on something, you just have to let her know she’s not wasting her efforts. She’s a _fantastic_ seamstress, and painter, and director- she knows a lot about theatre.”

“Wait,” Sylvain says. “Bernadetta?”

“Bernadetta?” Ingrid echoes, her voice jumping up an octave in a tone that sounds like disbelief. “Bernadetta Varley?”

“Yes,” Felix says, knowing he’s blushing furiously. His face is so _warm._ “Do you know her?”

“Yeah, of course!” Sylvain says. “We’re pals, we work on the arts journal together. She's fantastic, honestly. ”

“I was partnered with her in a project last year,” Ingrid explains. “I only got about two words out of her the whole time, but she pulled her weight on the project all the same. It was a really strange class.”

Felix shrugs. He supposes that sounds like the Bernadetta he knows, but not exactly. “She’s a bit skittish,” he agrees. “But she’s always very open about how she feels. I...like her.”

“Clearly,” Ingrid says. “I think your face is redder than Sylvain’s phone right now.” Everyone’s eyes drift towards Sylvain’s phone, which is doing its best to leave a tomato coloured stain on the table.

“Shut up,” Felix grumbles.

Sylvain grins at him. “You should ask her out on a date!” he suggests.

“Absolutely not,” Felix replies. “That’s a terrible idea.” He’d fuck it up and drive her away, and he doesn’t even know how to ask someone on a date in the first place.

“You should try anyway,” Dimitri encourages. “You like her, and by the sounds of it she quite likes you, if she’s willing to open up.”

“I agree,” Ingrid says. “You should try dating some time, you might find you like it.” Because of course - Felix is the only one of their group who _hasn’t_ dated anyone, and he’s already plenty old enough to have done so. Of course Ingrid wants to remind him of that.

Felix puts his head in his hands, covering up the further reddening of his cheeks. He groans. He’s so screwed. “If you all know so much,” he says, “then just give me some damn advice, okay?”

“Why, Felix!” Dimitri says. “I thought you’d never ask.”

_Act Three, Scene Three_

“Backgrounds take so long to paint,” Felix says with a groan, looking back up from the board he’s been painting for what feels like hours. Even with a broad brush and a single colour to coat it, it’s still only half done.

Bernadetta is pacing. She’s been pacing for half an hour now, flicking light switches on and off, squinting at the half-painted scenery. She’s cycled through what must be six different colour combinations by now, and varying levels of intensity. Felix has felt the spotlight on him at least once.

“We need to remake the colour,” she says, and Felix blinks. He’s not exactly surprised that she said it, because she’s already suggested it three times this afternoon and once before they even started, but he thought that maybe he persuaded her last time.

“We don’t,” he says firmly. “Look, the paint isn’t even dry.” He sticks his finger onto the board and holds his now-blue fingertip up to her. Before she can stress more about ruining the coat, he slaps paint over the imprint left on the board. “It’ll look different under the lights when it’s done.”

Bernadetta lets out a shaky sigh. “Okay,” she says. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.” She pauses, steps away from the half painted background, and opens her mouth again. “Can you take a look at these light cues? I want a second opinion.”

Felix is tempted to say that he knows exactly nothing about lighting, but he’ll give anything a shot if it might decrease her stress levels even a little. “What does that mean?” he asks, pointing at one of the acronyms.

“That’s for soft lighting,” Bernadetta explains. Felix looks down at the scene the lighting is for and winces. It’s one of his monologues. “What’s wrong?”

“Soft lighting makes me look...girly,” he complains. It makes his cheeks look rounder, eliminates any semblance of cheekbones, and adds a shine to his hair and rosy look to his face that make him look so much younger.

Bernadetta frowns. “It’ll be fine,” she promises. “It’s not just you who’s lit up like that, and your character isn’t exactly the pinnacle of bravado.”

Felix knows that all it will do is remind people that he’s pretending to be something he’s not. Felix flips through the whole booklet, and he sees those handful of letters again and again and again. “It’s all like this?” he asks, his tone a little desperate. He sounds pathetic, even to himself.

“If anyone thinks you’re a woman because the lighting is pale instead of stark then they probably need their eyes checked,” Bernadetta points out.

This time, it’s Felix’s turn to deflate, and he nods. He goes back to painting the scene background, but his jaw feels tight. There’s a lump in his throat that half constricts his breathing, and he knows what it is. He’s frustrated at himself, mostly, for being so unreasonable. He probably upset Bernadetta, too.

They work in silence for a while longer. The tightness in Felix’s chest doesn’t ease, and Bernadetta continues to pace. He snaps a paintbrush and ends up flicking blue paint all over the stage, and Bernadetta trips when she goes to fetch a cloth to clean it up. At some point, he’s pretty sure they both come close to tears.

He knows he’s just stressed because of how quickly the play is approaching. It feels like only yesterday that rehearsals began, but the play itself is only in a couple of weeks. Everything is _meant_ to be coming together, but it’s not, and if he fucks this up it’ll all be-

Felix lets out another sigh. “We’re both way too stressed,” he says. Bernadetta looks up from the notebook she’s hastily scrawling notes into and nods. “Let’s do something else.”

Bernadetta hesitates as he stands, looking at him with a half-formed objection on her tongue. It vanishes within a moment. “Yeah,” she says, sounding exhausted. “I need to be anywhere but here right now.”

_Act Three, Scene Four_

Even though Felix was the one who suggested getting out of the studio and going elsewhere, once they’re outside it’s Bernadetta who takes charge. She takes their usual route down the main road, but diverts onto another street just two exits before the turning they’d usually make.

“I thought we could get something to eat?” she suggests, her tone a little hesitant. There’s a blush on her cheeks, though Felix can’t quite work out why.

“That sounds good,” he says, and she smiles, leading him across the road to a small building he’s honestly never, not in the entire seventeen years he’s lived in this town, even considered entering before. “What is this place?”

“A cafe,” she says. “It’s nice. I come here occasionally.”

And it _is_ nice, Felix realises once they step inside. Outside, it looks like nothing special, but when they step into the cafe’s ground floor, he sees that every surface is covered in _something._ There’s a wall made up entirely of bookshelves, and opposite the food cases is a set of shelves covered in plants.

The food itself is...pricey, Felix notes with a wince, but at least the portions are large. “I’m paying,” he says firmly, before Bernadetta can even open her mouth. “But I get to pick the piece of cake. What drink do you want?”

Bernadetta nods after a moment’s hesitation. “U-um, the honeyed fruit tea, please.”

“Got a sweet tooth?” Felix asks, and Bernadetta nods again. “Is the chilli chocolate cake okay?”

“Yep!” she says. She shies back a little from the counter when a server comes over to ask Felix what he’d like; this is part of the reason Felix said he would pay. He couldn’t imagine Bernadetta being able to keep her cool when ordering food, and he was right.

“This place is nice,” he says, as Bernadetta walks up the stairs in front of him, plate of cake and two forks in hand. She’d opted not to take the tea, accepting Felix’s offer to carry them himself. “It’s quaint, and sort of cute. Very you.”

Bernadetta nearly trips on the last step. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks, and Felix can’t see her face, but he _does_ see the way her ears go red. Cute, just like he said.

“Nothing,” he says innocently, very glad that Bernadetta has her back to him. He’s probably blushing just as furiously. “It just makes sense that you like it here.”

“Well, I do,” she says, rounding a corner in the decidedly less open-plan upper floor of the cafe and settling down in a small windowside nook. “I come here to write sometimes.”

“Oh?” Felix asks. “What do you write?”

“O-oh, um, it’s nothing special really.”

“I want to hear anyway,” he says firmly.

“I write fantasy, mostly,” she says, twirling her spoon in her tea. She’s mixed yet more honey in there, which Felix can’t quite understand but he’ll let it pass. For now. “At the moment, I’m writing about this dragon, his name is Arturan, and he adopts a girl he finds- oh, Goddess, I can’t keep talking about this. It’s so embarrassing.”

“Tell me more,” Felix prompts. Bernadetta looks up from her tea, finally, and he hopes she sees the interest on his face. “It’s interesting, so I want to know. No putting yourself down.”

“Fine,” Bernadetta says, taking a sip of her tea. “Ow, that’s still too hot. If you _really_ want to know, Arturan adopts a little girl he finds in the woods, and he raises her. Years and years later, they’re really close, but she wants to go into the local town. He’s worried that she might want to leave forever, and he’s afraid of what people may do to her, but…”

Bernadetta looks over, blinking at him. “Felix?” She stares at the forkful of cake, tipped towards her, that Felix pushed towards her on impulse. 

“Do you want some?” he asks. Her eyes meet his, and he feels his cheeks heat up. Bernadetta goes pink too, pulls a face at him, and eats the cake from the fork.

“Okay,” she says, snatching up her fork in an instant. “You, young man, are eating some as well.”

Felix splutters. “No I’m not,” he says. They’re in _public._ If he does this he’ll look like a fool, and if any of his friends ever find out that would be it for him. But then again, he’s already in a cafe where the wallpaper has flowers on and his napkin is pink. He threw ‘masculinity’ to the wind long ago.

“Yes you are,” Bernadetta says, waving her fork towards him. Felix rolls his eyes and opens his mouth, letting Bernadetta put the fork inside. He tries to keep his eyes away from her, knowing that if he looks at how close she is, he might not be able to hold himself back from trying to kiss her.

The rest of the afternoon is fun - the tea cools enough for them to drink eventually, and they end up chatting about all kinds of things that have nothing to do with theatre at all. It’s a good break, and though the underlying feeling of stress doesn’t vanish altogether, Felix is finally able to think about other things.

Once they’re done, they leave the cafe and walk back home together, as if they’d never been a little snippy with each other and had to leave the studio early. “This was great,” Bernadetta says as they approach her house.

“It was,” Felix agrees. He looks at her for a moment. She looks at him. And maybe it’s the light, maybe the fact that the sun is too hot, but Felix could swear she leans in for a moment.

But the second passes, and Bernadetta rocks back on her heels and turns around. “Maybe we should ban theatre more often,” she says with a laugh.

“I wouldn’t object to that.”

When Bernadetta disappears in through her front door, Felix realises. That was a fucking date, and he didn’t even realise. Damn it.

_Act Three, Scene Five_

Bernadetta stands at the front of Felix’s house, staring at the door. It’s a heavy, wooden door, and for a moment she worries that her knock wasn’t heard, or that the house is too large for anyone to know she’s standing out here, and maybe she should just text Felix to let him know she’s here-

Felix opens the door when her hand is halfway to the pocket of her shorts. “Hi,” he says. They stand in silence for a beat, and he continues. “I’m glad you decided to come.” He looks nervous in a way Bernadetta isn’t used to seeing, and she can’t blame him for it.

He invited her to ‘chill’, a word she didn’t even know was in his vocabulary, because the weather is hot and focusing on anything is impossible right now. He has something planned, Bernadetta can tell - he told her to bring something she’d swim in, emphasising that no his father isn’t quite excessive enough to own a swimming pool.

Felix seems in a hurry as he lets her in, ushering her towards the stairs. Halfway across the hall, he freezes, and mumbles an apology.

“Felix!” a voice calls. “Has your friend arrived?” Bernadetta turns and sees a man who looks startlingly similar to Felix approaching them both.

“Yeah,” Felix mumbles. “This is Bernadetta, she does the creative direction for the play.”

“And a lot beyond that, from what I’ve heard,” the man - presumably Felix’s father - adds. There’s a knowing note to his tone that makes Bernadetta nervous. “It’s good to meet you, Bernadetta. I’m glad to see Felix making new friends.”

Felix makes a noise of indignation, and Bernadetta feels heat rising to her cheeks. “It’s, um, good to meet you too!” she manages.

Felix’s father smiles. “Well, you two can get on with your plans,” he says. “I’ll leave you alone. The biscuits will be done soon, so just come and get them when you’re ready.”

“Oh, you really didn’t have to do that,” Bernadetta says. And now she’d just assumed that he was doing it for _her,_ when he was probably just doing it anyway, and she probably looks like an entitled fool, and-

Felix’s father just smiles at her. “I wanted to,” he says. “Especially for a charming young lady like you. Now go on, I think Felix may just explode if I talk to you more.”

Felix grumbles under his breath as his father turns back towards the kitchen. “I’m sorry about his...existence,” he says, and Bernadetta laughs.

“If you think he’s embarrassing, you haven’t met my uncle or his boyfriend yet,” she says. “He’s just being nice! I don’t mind.” It’s a little nerve wracking to be so obviously _observed,_ but it doesn’t bother her as much as she expected it to.

Felix leads her upstairs, letting her change in the bathroom while he goes to his bedroom. In front of the mirror, staring down at herself, Bernadetta can’t help but worry. She knows Felix doesn’t care about how she looks, not exactly, but at the same time...

Her swimsuit is simple; purple and flowery, and she wears similarly patterned shorts on top. She doesn’t swim very often, and she knows the garments are very clearly new, but she doesn’t know what that’ll mean to Felix.

She stares herself down in the mirror when she hears Felix’s door open, and steels herself. She and Felix are friends, and he knows plenty about how her body looks. This is meant to be _fun._

She can feel Felix’s eyes on her as she steps out of the bathroom, but she tries not to think about it. She looks back at him as confidently as she can, and offers up a shaky smile. “You’re ready?” she asks.

He nods. “You,” he swallows, “your swimsuit looks nice. It suits you.”

It’s all Bernadetta can do not to scream. “Y-you too!” she says, and it isn’t just an empty compliment. Felix’s blue-patterned trunks go well with the waterproof binder that covers his top half, and he’s…

He works out. Bernadetta knows this, knows that no one could have Felix’s stamina for acting without a decent lung capacity, but, well- he has muscles. He’s sort of hot, and he’s definitely blushing, and she’s blushing too, and-

“Let’s go outside,” Felix says, turning away very quickly. Bernadetta nods her agreement and follows him down the stairs and back in the direction his father went earlier. The man himself is gone, but in his place is a plate of cookies and a large jug of lemonade.

“You take the plate?” Felix suggests, moving for the jug. Bernadetta nods, hoping she’ll get the chance to thank his father later; the cookies look really good.

They take them out into the garden and sit down on the grass. Bernadetta doesn’t often go out in the sun unless she’s going somewhere else, and she feels like it shows - compared to Felix, she’s pasty as anything. Somehow, though, she doesn’t really mind. She doesn’t think Felix cares, and that makes it easier to push it out of her own mind.

The plate of cookies vanishes within a few minutes, and Felix stretches out in the sun and closes his eyes. It’s at this point that Bernadetta starts to get properly nervous, but she bites it down and opens her mouth. “Those were really good!” she says.

“Yeah,” Felix says, opening his eyes and looking up at her. There’s a small smile on his face, and Bernadetta feels her heart jump when his eyes meet hers. There’s a moment where Felix leans up, leans _in,_ and Bernadetta fees like she’s frozen on the spot.

The moment passes when Felix jumps to his feet and dashes halfway across the garden before Bernadetta can even react. “It’s too hot,” Felix complains. “I’ll turn the sprinkler on?”

There’s an evil glint in his eyes, so Bernadetta knows exactly what that means. “Oh, you’re on!” she says, leaping to her feet before Felix can get the water running. “You won’t catch me, mister.”

Felix grins back at her and turns the sprinkler on, watching with eager eyes as it turns to splash her with cold water. “Are you up to the challenge?” he asks, making his way back towards her.

Bernadetta cups her hands and attempts to splash some water towards him, flicking him with barely more than a few droplets of the water. It’s _cold,_ too, and she won’t achieve much this way, so…

She smiles, dashes towards him, and pushes him towards the steady stream of water. Felix gasps and splutters, shoving her back, and she laughs. “What’s the matter, farmboy? Afraid you won’t land a single blow?”

“The name is Alm—not ‘farmboy.’” Felix shoots back with a laugh, attempting to splash her again. “I thought this was a no-theatre zone, Bernie?”

“But the whole world’s a stage, Felix!” Bernadetta objects, splashing him again.

“But _is_ it?” Felix asks, his voice taking on the soft tone she recognises as his Alm voice. “The world isn’t a game to be toyed with, Bernadetta! The people you direct are more than amusements to pass the time with.”

“Actors on a stage are merely peasants!” Bernadetta cries back, grabbing Felix’s arm in an attempt to push him into the full stream of water.

“Well maybe the peasants have feelings!” Felix returns, spinning her around directly into the sprinkler’s path. Bernadetta lets out a peal of laughter, slipping on the grass beneath her feet. Felix cries out in surprise, stumbling on top of her and ending up with his ass planted on the grass right next to the sprinkler.

“I believe I have brought you to your...knees,” Bernadetta crows, watching as Felix splutters through a faceful of water. “Perhaps this time I shall grant you mercy, knave.” She reaches a hand out to Felix to help him up, but he tugs, bringing her down right on top of him.

Bernadetta laughs, her eyes forced closed against the onslaught of water (and maybe just a little because she doesn’t know what she’ll do with her face this close to Felix’s). There’s a moment again, just like the one before, and she can feel his breathing quickening. She opens her eyes and looks at him again, lit up by the sunlight reflecting off the droplets of water on his face, and-

“Are you okay out here, kids?” a voice asks, and Bernadetta’s head whirls round to spot Felix’s father in the doorway. “I heard shouting.”

“Fine!” Felix calls back, scrambling on the grass in a way that Bernadetta would privately call adorable. “We’re fine. Don’t worry, you can go back inside.”

Bernadetta feels like her face is on fire as she gets up from the ground, even though Felix’s father is already gone by the time she turns around. “Goddess, I’m so embarrassed,” she says, and Felix nods.

“I wish he’d keep his nose out,” he says, going back over to turn the sprinkler off. “Maybe we should just...be a little quieter for a bit.” He flops back down onto a dry patch of grass as he speaks.

Bernadetta joins him, letting the sun dry her off. They both lie there, their eyes closed, for...Bernadetta doesn’t keep track, but it’s a long time. They don’t do any acting, and only talk occasionally, letting the silence speak for them.

It’s nice.

_Act Three, Scene Six_

Finally, after months of practise, tears, and anxieties, the play takes centre stage.

Garreg Mach has seen many tightly constructed plays in its time, though many in the audience would say that none were quite like this year’s production of Shadows of Valentia. Every costume is perfectly in place and the colours of the set pop out in the right places and fade into the background at others.

Each light is perfectly timed, even though some audience members seated at the back would report the occasional ‘wake _up,_ Linhardt!’ from the light deck. Spotlights roam with precision, and the colours don’t make anyone look particularly girly.

The plot is a little staid, a little straight, but no one coming out of any of the performances ever complains about that. Instead, they talk of the way the actors pulled off such a difficult script, the life they breathed into a story that has been told a hundred times.

The play is lengthy, split into parts that occasionally seemed to drag on forever in rehearsals. When it’s all put together for fresh eyes, however, each audience member is clearly enraptured. There’s a compliment ready for every actor by the end, each one having made the best of the lines they had.

On the side of the performers, it’s an exhilarating experience. The lights down low in the audience and up high on stage means it’s difficult to see much of a reaction, especially when focusing on the action on stage itself, but anyone who glances away for more than a moment can still see the sea of smiles, appearing night after night as the production wears on.

It’s exhausting; acting always is. The culmination of months of effort is nothing short of taxing, but it’s worth it. Everyone goes away buzzing, ready to come back the next day and do it all over again.

It’s better than Felix ever expected. People _like_ him and even think he plays Alm well. There’s no mention of a ‘girl Alm’ or even a ‘brave casting decision’ by anyone who watches. After the first night, he sets himself up to hear something at least a little pointed, but the words never come. People are fine with it. Fine with _him._

They praise his delivery, his energy. The connections he clearly has with the rest of the cast, the ease of his movements, the emotion in his performance. The compliments keep coming, and for the first time, there’s no bitter taste in his mouth as he looks at the programme. He stands at every curtain call and _smiles,_ because acting finally feels truly right.

The praise isn’t restricted to the actors, either. Bernadetta’s efforts don’t go unnoticed, and people even come up to her after performances and say they love what she’s achieved. Bernadetta has helped out in the crew for years upon years, and never before this has she ever been recognised for her work. It makes a nice change.

On the final night, everyone gets up on stage for one last curtain call. Berkut and Fernand’s actors stand, arms slung over each other’s shoulders as they smile. Mae’s actress comes out onto the stage hand in hand with Celica’s actress, to resounding applause.

When Felix comes out onto the stage, blinking into the spotlight one final time, the audience cheers. He pauses for a moment, waves, and darts backstage to fetch one last person who needs to be appreciated.

Bernadetta very nearly curls in on herself and runs away when people applaud her as well, but Felix’s hand stays firmly, soothingly, on her back, and she manages to stay through her embarrassment. It’s good, in the end. She doesn’t hate the attention as much as she expected to.

And, finally, the curtain falls. But the story doesn’t end.


	4. Epilogue

_Epilogue_

After the play, the actors always go somewhere. For the case of this performance, a cast party has been organised - Rodrigue sacrifices his home to the whims of teenagers and hopes that cleanup won’t take too long the following morning.

For Felix, it’s fun at first, but it gets a little overwhelming. Everyone wants to tell him about his performance, their own performances, and what their families have said about the whole thing. Everyone _also_ wants to dance, and hug each other, and eat far too much pizza.

He goes out to the kitchen for a reprieve, and he isn’t surprised at what he finds there. Bernadetta, crouched next to the fridge, petting Kyphon. “Do you want to go outside for a bit?” he asks.

Initially, she jumps at his voice, but when she turns around the expression on her face softens. Felix feels that same feeling as before jump in his chest. “Yeah,” she says. “I think that’s a good idea.”

Leaving everyone else in the house, they open the back door and head just outside. Felix sits down on the wide doorstep and Bernadetta settles down next to him as he closes the door. It’s dark out, and the air is slightly damp and cold - soothing, after the heat of pressed-in bodies.

It’s quiet. The muffled sounds of everyone still inside can reach them, just about, but it feels like they’re alone. It’s perfect for what he needs to say. “Thank you,” he says. “For...everything you’ve done in the past few months.”

“O-oh, it was no problem!” Bernadetta says. Felix is pretty sure that if he could properly see her face, he’d be able to see her blushing.

“So I-I just wanted to ask…” He’s practised this a hundred times, but now he can't quite work out how to say it. “Summer is coming.” Bernadetta nods. “And we probably can’t exactly see each other for theatre stuff but maybe we could- see each other for other things?”

“Do you mean for...a date?” Bernadetta asks, her voice apprehensive. “Sorry, sorry! You don’t mean it like that, of course you don’t, just pretend you never heard-”

“Yes,” Felix says, cutting her off. “On a date.”

It’s dark, but Felix turns his head properly, meets Bernadetta’s eyes, and leans in. For a moment, their lips touch - gently, tentatively, full of a promise of more to come.

Someone cheers from inside, and they spring apart, but in the moment Felix grabs onto Bernadetta’s hand and she doesn’t let go.

“So…do you mean it? We’ll always be together?” Felix quotes, his face easing into a soft smile.

Bernadetta smiles back at him. “Yes. I promise.”

Beyond the stage, there is a fairytale in the making. There isn’t a prince, a princess, or a war between those who oppress and those who wish to be free.

But there is a young man, a young woman, and a bright, happy future ahead of them. Perhaps it is a story for the ages, or one that will never be told. But it will happen, and it will be incredible.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this fic I would super appreciate a comment. I also have a twitter over at [@samariumwriting](https://twitter.com/samariumwriting) where I tweet about my writing a lot!


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